


Imbolc

by Zooheaded



Category: True Detective
Genre: A forgone conclusion, Domestic Fluff, Living Together, M/M, Porn With Plot, navigating new paths, new relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-17
Updated: 2015-06-30
Packaged: 2018-04-04 19:07:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,568
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4149450
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zooheaded/pseuds/Zooheaded
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's after they start sharing the bed, Marty guesses, is when he'd gone and started thinking different.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [blackeyedblonde](https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackeyedblonde/gifts).



> A setting of the stage for when things come to a head. Hope you enjoy! 
> 
> For a visualization of Rust's hair think 'Mud' to 'Lincoln Lawyer.' The title 'Imbolc' comes from a Gaelic festival that marks the beginning of spring, halfway between the winter solstice and the spring equinox

_Oh, he wonders_  
_How much there is to know_  
_And how long will it take him_  
_To learn it as he goes_  
_Spring submits to summer_  
_Summer bows to fall_  
_Autumn’s leaves lay down and die_  
_At the winter’s beck and call_  
―The Sword, _Seven Sisters_

 

 

It's after they start sharing the bed, Marty guesses, is when he'd gone and started thinking different.

Because he's reached as far back into his memory bank as he can go and can't come up with a single instance of when he'd ever looked at Rust and thought about anything that resembled what he was feeling now. Punching his teeth out, blacking his eyes maybe, yeah, but thoughts like those hadn't come for a long time. About a decade actually. Ten years was a long fuckin' time. It don't feel that way when you're young, because you can be ten years old splitting your kneecaps open wide on the pavement cause you were stupid enough to ride your bike with no hands, then you blink, and you're twenty years old in college fucking a beautiful girl for entire weekends at a time and wondering how it all happened so quick.

The good years come in cycles Marty realized, like clock hands swinging to twelve, three, six and nine, then back around again. Ports of light in the great shitstorm of life. But there he goes, channeling Rust again like the man was a philosophical pea soup puking demon, possessing him like in the fucking _Exorcist_.

The last ten years felt more like it coulda easily been a thousand, burned out in front of the TV. One at a time, like slow dying stars. _Okcupid_ and _Match.com_ profiles blurring together on his computer screen into a haze of thirty to forty something year olds. TV dinner after TV dinner, beer, and maybe a few of his own bitter tears added into the mix. He knew that for Rust it must've felt like much longer. An eternity of cold up there in Alaska, if the way his hands shook around a cigarette sometimes before he could haul in that first drag was any indication. Like he was cold all over, and the cold went all the way down into his bones.

They'd argued over his medication in the first week, the painkillers he was supposed to be taking, was _refusing_ , being a real fucking asshole about it too, and Marty hadn't known what the real problem was but Rust had somehow gotten it into his head that Marty was eventually going to dump him back in a psychiatric hospital. Marty had figured it had just been the fever talking, but Rust had gotten overwhelmed and rattled up by whatever shit was swirling around in his head and had gone to pieces, shattering right there in his arms while Marty had just sat there and held him, feeling sick to his stomach.

(( _“I'm tired Marty... I'm so tired.”_ ))

They started sharing the bed that night, and every night since. Bed felt better to sleep on than the couch did anyway, Marty told himself. Shit had been murder on his back, and if he wanted to sleep in his own bed, he had every fucking right. It was a free country, and he was a goddamn American. And if he happened to wake up to a sharp nose pressing firm and cold into his throat, air puffing out warm on his collarbone, and muddled feelings of affection and contentment sitting heavy in his chest? Well, nobody else had to know, and he wasn't gonna give voice to any of that sentimental shit anyhow.

~=+=+=+=~

In the weeks after that episode, Marty had taken to studying Rust like he was the most interesting thing on the planet, like if he could just gather a few more clues, clock a few more tells, he could unlock the great internal secret of ' _Rustin Cohle, philosophizing bullshitter._ ' So far there wasn't much to pull, but that didn't stop Marty from pulling.

“What's that color taste like?” Marty'd blurted when Rust was curled up on the couch in front of the TV, shrouded in the midnight blue throw blanket Marty had picked up special from the Marshalls the other day.

“Wood varnish.” Rust had drawled immediately, staring partially open mouthed at a Lincoln car commercial and rubbing the edge of the blanket between finger and thumb mindlessly.

Marty gnaws the inside of his cheek a moment. “Huh.” Then observes a steak being slo-mo slapped down onto a grill with juices flowing and perfect char lines amidst a grate of flames for some chain restaurant ad. “How about that?”

“Charcoal. New pennies.”

“Oh, kinda ruins the appetite a little bit.” Marty says frowning slightly, but still thinking about steak.

“Little bit.”

“And that one?” Marty asked, gesturing to the creamy whites of a greek yogurt commercial.

“Like fresh air, bit like quiet nothingness in the light before the sun really rises and- look Marty, this ain't some kind of fucking parlor trick. If you're bored we can watch something else-”

“Was just curious, Jesus, what's your fucking problem?” Marty shot back defensively, scowling back and forth between Rust and the C.O.P.S rerun they had become invested in.

“No problem, just... you used to hate listening to this shit. Begged me to shut my fucking mouth.” Rust states accusingly, eyes still locked on the TV like a boxed perp.

“Yeah, well, maybe I'm interested now huh? Ever think of that?”

Rust lets his head touch the arm rest, wedging a pillow up into his arms to hug lightly to his chest and finally cuts his eyes in Marty's direction. “Guess not.”

Marty'd taken him to the library when he'd healed up enough to walk a bit, then the bookstore, even the fucking paper store and let him pick out stationary and pens amidst a chorus of mostly ungrateful grumbles: _“I have my own goddamn money Marty.”_ and _“You wouldn't like these books Marty, not enough pictures for you.”_ and his personal favorite _“You don't gotta be doing this, you don't owe me nothing.”_ because Marty hadn't let him pay for a damn thing, as though each item purchased could be a stepping stone to... well, not _happiness_ exactly, but a breadcrumb trail to lead Rust away from that frightful edge he'd been toeing ever since they'd fallen back together. Ever since he'd been born maybe.

Marty wasn't much good at this, but if he put in the effort he could at least call it a start.

~=+=+=+=~

Rust had hacked off his hair above the ponytail with the kitchen scissors on his second day out of the hospital before Marty could wake up and get mad at him for stretching his arms up too far over his head. Carved that bent up roadkill off his face the fourth, but Marty didn't have much to complain about there. Rust's auburn, honey-wheat hair was threaded with grey now, but it made like a forest of waves that hung down, framing his face and curling wildly at the ends. Marty was annoyed and distracted by the fact that it was uneven, choppy, and growing in wild like vines choking out a tree. It made Rust look like some bygone middle aged surfer stereotype, the only thing missing was a sharktooth hemp necklace and a big titted blonde hanging on each arm. The image was at once so vivid and absurd in his head that it made him crack up and he'd nearly aspirated his coffee right there at the kitchen table.

Marty'd let that sit for about two months, until the stitches had come out of Rust's gut at least, and then he'd asked him to work over at _Investigative Solutions_ , and what a fucking trial that conversation had been. But one long and tired argument later, Marty had gotten a satisfactory _“I'll think about it.”_ from Rust, and then was forcing him down onto the closed lid of the toilet seat and clicking a gauge four attachment onto the hair clippers. _“Do whatever you want.”_ Rust had eventually said, and didn't seem to really care one way or the other.

Marty'd claimed Rust's lawnmower chopped up 'Surfer Christ' look was “unprofessional” but really, it just made Rust look _desperately_ young, and Marty was far, _far_ too many beers away from being able to deal with the indecipherable feelings that woke in him.

Rust had jumped when the clippers clicked on and held very, very still while Marty removed small sections of his hair, hardly even breathing at all, and seemingly kept upright only by the hand on his shoulder. He'd eventually relaxed when Marty, unthinkingly, began tracing his scalp with his fingers to make sure he was keeping it even on both sides. When he was finished, Rust's hair was a little shorter on the sides, but a bit longer in the back, curling at the nape of his neck. It was a cleaner look that could still pass as job suitable, and Rust could push it back out of his face a little easier if the urge struck him.

“Not half bad.” Marty commented when he thumbed off the clippers, pleased with himself.

“And here I was thinking you were all set to braid it up pretty for me. Pigtails maybe.” Rust had said, staring sleepily into the mirror above the sink and combing his fingers back through his hair over and over. Marty flipped him the bird in the reflection.

“I almost went for the full cut, like the time when you looked like some kind of fucked up shark, just for the memories.” Marty said around a lopsided smirk.

That wouldn't have been any less distracting than leaving it like this, Marty noted, because all he could picture was a softer, more tired version of when Rust had gone sharp around the edges in the early 2000's. In typical 'Rust scented meat bullshit channeling,' it'd put a bad taste in Marty's mouth when he'd considered it, like maybe he could taste the busted out taillight of a red Ford F-250 hitting him in the mouth. Sometimes he wondered if synesthesia was contagious, but he'd googled it the other day instead of asking Rust and making an ass of himself. (It wasn't.)

Rust nodded sagely, as though Marty's words had filled in the center pieces of some great cosmic puzzle. “Mmm.”

And things had gone on after that. A once empty house drawing its first breath with the presence of another, and Marty felt something in his chest beginning to fill in like a cold beach dug hole caving in with warm smooth sand. Loneliness running out with the tide.

~=+=+=+=~

Marty mostly let Rust be for the time being, making sure he wasn't pushing him into anything he didn't want, checking to see that he was settled in for the day before he'd go to work, shit like that. But he'd bring home case files, casually storing them by the coffee pot, the kitchen table, the coffee table, places Rust would see them, trying to spark his interest in something other than watching _North Woods Law_ on Animal Planet or sitting out in the backyard going through a pack of cigarettes like they were the candy version.

After a few days of this, Marty'd started seeing notes filling the margins of his paperwork, scrawled out in a cramped hand: _“Probably the son, work the mom a little harder, she's probably protecting him.”_ and _“Father's cheating. Imagine that.”_ and _“You leaving these here on purpose? I ain't fucking six. I said I'd think about it.”_ These notes kind of pissed him off a little, but then again, that was typical Rust, and anything that got the man interested again Marty would take. And if he left a sticky note melted onto the glass of the coffee pot with a crudely drawn hand giving the finger and a “ _Fuck you”_ written underneath, well, that was for Rust to discover later.

~=+=+=+=~

Their sleeping arrangements hadn't changed, and Marty had eventually decided that this was a good thing. There hadn't been any more nervous breakdowns or arguments, and they'd gotten pretty well used to each other being there. They'd still dream sometimes and wake in a cold sweat in the night, but it was better now. Better because there was someone there to tell them they'd been dreaming and drag them back from the edge. Rust would often still be asleep when Marty got up for work, curled into the blankets on his side of the bed, eyes clamped shut and breath flowing out even, but he always woke when Marty made to get up. The man slept like a god damn cat.

~=+=+=+=~

Marty came home with an empty sketchbook and some pencils and pens one time, and Rust had looked at him like he'd never seen him before. Later, Marty stealthily peeked through a couple of the used pages and saw carefully illustrated versions of the mockingbird that started up every morning around 5am, and the possum that sometimes got into the garbage can. There was a candid portrait of himself in there too, reading glasses down on his nose while he was interrogating the newspaper. Marty couldn't remember being stared at for that long by Rust without realizing it, and wondered about what else he'd gone and missed.

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this took twelve years to finish. This is also probably the most explicit thing I've ever written. Hail Satan. (I didn't edit much, got tired of reading it over and over but I think it came out alright~) 
> 
> Enjoy!
> 
> /boards the trash barge to garbage island

 

A cloudy, cool, but humid Thursday afternoon in October, finds Marty kneeling in the bathtub, sweatpants rolled up over his knees and one sleeve pushed firmly above his elbow, scrubbing ineffectively at the cool porcelain with a can of powdered Comet and a magic eraser.

Rust's stitches had been out for almost two weeks now and Marty had yet to try make him do anything as strenuous as cleaning, because Jesus it was a fucking _job_. It was always Maggie that was good at this shit, usually took care of everything like this. He refused to call her again asking for advice, she'd already just about blocked his number over the amount of times he'd rung her up in the middle of the night in a high strung bonafide tizzy over Rust while he was healing up. He'd have to try to figure this shit out on his own. He still had some pride left damn it.

He rubs at the soap scum lining the rear curve of the tub, brow furrowed in extreme displeasure, half a mind to break out the sander and buffer the entire thing smooth. Just start right the fuck over with a clean slate, or maybe try to look something up on Google. Youtube tutorial or something. He liked those. Learned how to fix the kitchen tile grout with one.

But just when he's thinking that little jug of ammonia lingering next to the tub might help ease the way, speak of the devil, the soft _shuff shuff_ sound on the hallway carpet indicates an approaching Rust before Marty even sees him.

The man in question drifts into the rectangular frame of the doorway, wearing blue plaid pajama pants and a long faded green college shirt of Marty's. He pauses there, practically levitating into view like some wayward spirit haunting Marty's house. Like he'd just decided to materialize and move his relatively benign poltergeist activities into the bathroom, cigarette smoke hanging about him like ectoplasm. Granted, Marty might've been watching a few too many horror flicks on _AMC's 30 Days of Halloween_ marathon lately, but he could swear that the temperature would subtly shift down a couple degrees whenever the man entered a room.

“You gotta piss or something?” Marty asks when Rust doesn't say anything right away, but Rust just continues to observe him, sleepy eyed and loose shouldered. Marty sighs through his nose, hefts the white gallon jug of ammonia up into the tub and starts unscrewing the cap.

“Hey, hey, the fuck you doing?” Rust cuts in quickly, inserting himself into the narrow bathroom.

Marty gives him a look. “Uh, obviously I'm cleaning out the bottom of the fucking tub. Magic eraser my ass, shit ain't working.”

“Don't use ammonia, there's bleach in that Comet shit. You'll gas yourself out.”

Marty drags his eyes down to the metallic green Comet can, heavy suspicion lacing his eyes. “No there ain't.”

“Yeah there is, says right there on the goddamn label, maybe you should put on your glasses.” Rust insists, folding his arms firmly against his chest and sliding into full throttle smart ass mode. “Ammonia and bleach make hydrochloric acid, then the ammonia and chlorine gas make chloramine which is released as a vapor. You breath that shit in it you'll burn your eyes out, inflame your lungs. Suffocate. Fuckin' die.” He sighs firmly through his nose, letting his arms flop down to his sides again. “Fuck's sake Marty, can't believe I have to tell you this shit.”

“Well I can't believe that I'm in here on my hands and knees like some god damn maid cleaning up this tub that you've gone and blackened up due to your barefoot contessa wanderings out in the fuckin' backyard!” Marty shoots back, fumbling quickly to replace the ammonia cap like it was a live tarantula.

“Yeah, I did that.”Rust agrees with a slow bob of his head. “Shit was all me, and definitely not you being a lazy fuck who just couldn't find no real reason to clean.” Rust drawls, gaze sweeping around the black smudges on the tub floor.

“Like you know how to keep a fucking home.” Marty says, lips pursed forward and magic eraser clutched in his fist like a weapon. “Your empty ass, white fucking mental house apartment, then that shithole of Doumain's, never mind wherever the fuck you'd been living in Alaska, probably a fucking hole in the ground lined with moss or in an igloo or some shit, you really had your living situation all figured out. That place behind the bar was some real Texas Chainsaw Massacre shit you know that?”

Rust blinks once, slow. “Well, I am from Texas.”

“Fuck you man. Go get a real house and call me up when you have to clean your own goddamn bathtub.” Marty grouses out, pissed.

The air seemed to shift a little, Rust going still and quiet, that temperature change Marty'd been so sure of coming down around them, and he has the sudden realization that he might've gone and said the wrong thing.

“You asking me to leave?” Rust says, arms hanging down limp as a pair of dead fish.

Marty froze, the question flying right out of left field and pulling any response he could have thought of right out of his mouth. _Of course Rust would go and take things the wrong way_. Marty swallows, “Uh, no, no, I was just-”

“You don't want me here I can go.” Rust cuts in quick, looking everywhere but at Marty. “Been thinking about it anyways, should get up, get going, don't got no need to bother you no more.” He says hastily, like he'd been rehearsing the words over and over in his head for some time now and had the whole goddamn spiel just waiting in the wings for the moment that he could expel it.

“Just didn't want you killing yourself was all.” Rust finishes soft, dragging his lower lip in between the gate of his teeth at the end of the last word.

Marty blinks down at the magic eraser in his hands, sitting there struck dumb. Somewhere in the kitchen the refrigerator whirrs and clicks, then stops again. “And what about you? What about you not killing yourself, yeah?” Marty blurts out.

Rust's eyes lower to stroke across his own, then continue on to the white tiled bathroom floor, lashes sweeping down low. “Ain't nothing about me worth worrying over.” He says, then backs up out of the bathroom slow, then drifts out of sight like he was never really there to begin with.

“Hey! Hey-” Marty says, dropping the Comet can in the tub and spilling out a generous handful of white powder. He curses and dumps the jug of ammonia down onto the floor where it rolls away on its side to bump against the outer wall of the tub. “Hey Rust, I didn't- _fuck_.” Groaning, he hauls himself out of the tub on cramped limbs, wondering how things could have gone downhill so fast. Rust had been a bit touchy lately but now he was acting like he'd been genuinely _hurt_ and Marty didn't like any of it. He stumbles into the hallway and catches Rust there just outside the bedroom. He didn't move very fast these days, the wound in his gut still healing.

“Will you just _wait_ a fucking minute?” Marty huffs out then catches Rust's arm at the soft bend of his elbow and turns him, shoving him up against the hallway wall harder than he'd intended, the sudden thud of flesh bumping painted up sheet rock and plaster was hard enough to be felt in his forearms and shocked both of them to stillness.

Marty'd never quite got the hang of putting his hands on another man without using a little bit more force than he'd intended. Not that Rust seemed to mind, he bowed back into it, body flowing with the motion easy as water. As though he had expected it. Was _waiting_ for it. As though they had choreographed this act and spent hours rehearsing the moment in the same way they had for the tale of Reggie Ledoux. This movement, ingrained within them so deeply, just as the story had been, that no matter who inquired, the version they'd created together became the only true reality.

They remained there, each blinking rapidly at the other, Rust's eyes spread open wider with something that Marty imagined was fear because Rust hadn't moved, just rested there still against the wall with Marty's hands on him, both of them breathing hard in the space between them. But it was only when Rust's fingers spidered up shaky and delicate over Marty's clenched fists and hugged them in close against his chest that Marty had a sudden wave of deja vu shuttling him back to a locker room a lifetime ago. Rust squeezed once just a little, and Marty remembered what that meant. They panted out in the dwindling negative space, noses near brushing, drawing in deep mouthfuls of each other's exhalations.

“You-” Marty swallows, glances down at his hands wrapped up in Rust's, and looks back up. “You ain't gonna kill yourself alright? Constitutions for it aside.” He forces out, the air he drags in is moist and warm. “And you don't... don't gotta leave.”

Rust just blinked at him soft, questions forming in his eyes. “Used to you being here.” Marty continues. “It's _good_ , you... you being here. I-I _want_ you here.” There was something. Some kinda charge sitting in the air like the moment before a fire catches, or the quiet before that first big boom of thunder. Ozone snapping in the air when lightning was gonna hit. An electricity kindling up and sparking between them.

“Yeah?” Rust whispers back to him, the word falling soft as a feather into his ears, body all tense, but flexible, hands squeezing in tight again. Marty could feel the power that lingered in those arms, even with the healing scab over the the ink black bird there, a damaged wing that still flapped strong.

“Yeah.”

Rust's eyes have gone warm and heavy lidded, lips parting slightly, gaze gone down and fixed heavy on Marty's mouth like he had tunnel vision for it. It calls to mind a thousand different times when Rust had just looked at his mouth. Marty used to think that he just didn't like maintaining eye contact and would just dart his gaze away and back again, but he'd never really done that with anyone else Marty had noticed and oh- _oh-_

“You ain't uh-” Marty swallows, suddenly wary, even as aching warmth began to thread its way into his belly. “You alright with this? Not gonna go and snap my wrists or some shit?”

Eyes still fixed on Marty's mouth, Rust half blinks, lids flowing down slow like warm syrup, spreading out the dark fan of his lashes. “Nope.”

Marty nods once, chin jutting out. “Good.”

They move to close the distance between them at the same time, lips coming together in slow, open mouthed kisses big enough to breath in deep and swallow each other whole. Marty might swear later that he'd felt some kind of shift, like something mechanical clicking into place and rolling smooth where it had been grinding a little before. He might have also felt that _this_ had been foreshadowed a decade and some change ago, but thoughts like this always reeked of that “psycho's fear” bullshit Rust always spewed out at him and Marty never could quite wrap his head around any of it. The how or why of it was escaping him, but there was something unexplainable and _right_ about it, and Marty just let that feeling roll over him in a wave to wash the others away.

Marty pulled his hands free as they molded into each other, and set them out roaming over the hard coiled body in front of him. There weren't soft curves lingering here, no warm breasts to press and bump against his chest, only rough carved skin worn smooth at the ribs and lower back, muscle lying in flat planes beneath it, but already, he could feel himself getting hard. Rust's fingers slip hesitant around the back of his neck, his other hand curling over his shoulder and deepening the kiss, their tongues darting out and pulling away, then darting out and pulling away again like skittish prairie dogs, afraid of their own shadows. When Marty gets both hands down inside the soft pair of pajama pants and around the meaty curve of Rust's ass and _squeezes_ , he's rewarded with a low, loose moan that reverberates from the top of his chest and all the way down to his stirring groin. He drags Rust into him and rolls their hips firmly together once. But Rust stills and all but rips his mouth away.

“Doesn't mean we can just go and do whatever the fuck we want.” He pants out, lips kiss-swollen red, wet, and his foggy gaze cutting from Marty's face, his mouth, then to somewhere just over his shoulder ad infinitum.

And Marty has to laugh, fucking _laughs_ , because Jesus fucking Christ they were just kissing like teenagers five seconds ago and Rust sounded like he was trying to finish up an argument that had ended ten years prior. “I think we're owed a little leeway by this point.” Marty says on the tail end of a chuckle, but Rust isn't smiling, more so than usual, and that wipes the grin right off his face.

“Did- did you not want...?” Marty asks hesitantly, feeling stupid, that old feeling of doing something he wasn't supposed to be rolling over him hot, and not in the exciting get-his-dick-up-at-half-mast kind of way. He tries to not to think about how ridiculous they must look standing there looking at each other: him with his hands inside Rust's pants and wrapped tight around his ass, and Rust with his long fingered hands perched upon Marty's shoulders, the both of them practically fused together tight at the hip and wedged up against the hallway wall. Powdered Comet spilled out into the bottom of a half scrubbed bathtub just feet away.

Rust's hands squeezed tight onto Marty's shoulder before loosening again, his fingers flexing in that anxious way of his. “No, no. I-I want, I mean- _fuck_.” He blinks, eyes gone wide, damp and wild. “I feel like I've been water just... circling this drain of you for years, like you were just living in the center of everything and all. And- and the water's going out. Dam's breaking and I'm trying to mend all the cracks with fucking crazy glue but-” He swallows, his head bobbing gently when he speaks in that manic way of his, then he squeezes his eyes shut and slowly, almost hesitantly, tips his head down to touch his forehead to Marty's.

“Fuck, Marty. There's a lot of things I want.” He says breath ghosting out shaky against Marty's cheek.

Marty lets go of Rust's ass with some effort, plants one hand around the curve of his hip and runs the other in a firm palm up his spine then back down again gentle. Soothing. “I'm a little confused here Rust, and while they ain't nothing new while we're having a conversation, I'd still appreciate it if you spelled it out for me.”

Rust rests there against him quiet, breath coming out of his nose in slow sighs. He stays there for what feels like an eternity and Marty's fingers have begun to numb over from the suddenly abrasive material of Rust's shirt, but the words reach his ears like a dream, so whisper soft that Marty feels like he could've imagined them. “You're the only good thing I got left, and I don't want to fuck it up.”

Feelings come and go in a whirl, and Marty's not entirely sure what to feel at all. He feels responsible, he feels guilty, he feels a little smidgen of pride. But he feels affection there too, burning the strongest out of all them, muddling in and spilling in hot and thankful waves through his chest. Rust didn't believe in second chances or any of that other divine cosmic sentimental love crap, but Marty sure as shit does.

“Jesus Rust, we've both already fucked up so much... I don't think we can do much worse. Really nowhere else to go but up at this point.” Marty says, just as quiet, and moves his fingers around to Rust's chin to get his head up, smoothing over the tense lines of his face. “C'mon, c'mon now.” Marty says soft and brushes his tongue light against Rust's mouth, trying to earn his way back in. Rust suddenly jerks his head away when fingers move to wind around the column of his neck and Marty yanks his hands away as if he's been burned.

“Shit, sorry, sorry.” He murmurs, but Rust doesn't take the opportunity to escape, only breathes once hard through his mouth, fists his fingers in tight to the material of Marty's shirt and bows his head back to expose the long sweat slick line of his throat in one slow movement, his blue eyes darkening to summer midnight. An invitation that Marty is all too eager to accept. He's quick to feel the pulse of the heavy vein in Rust's neck throbbing hot beneath his tongue, and the groans vibrating up from within like the warm resonations through a pipe organ.

When the first whispered breath of _“Marty.”_ leaves Rust's mouth, he becomes very aware of just how hard he is, how hard they both are grinding against each other like kids in the fuckin' hallway, and how close they are to making it to the bed.

“Bed.” Marty says, pulling away like it takes every ounce of effort to do so. "The bedroom." Rust follows him in the few short steps inside like a living corpse, movements syrup slow and loose. The door is left wide open. Marty sits down hard on the edge of the bed, his legs going suddenly weak with arousal and adrenaline and Rust has all but collapsed down on the soft carpet, his knees landing with a muffled thud.

Rust's eyes stare at Marty's sweatpants with pupils that are blown open wide like black gunshot holes. His hands shake as he grips the fabric, yanking the edge of the pants down and freeing Marty's straining dick in one smooth motion. “You don't gotta-” Marty says, words wheezing out of him like he might be having some kind of heart attack, but when Rust finally swallows him down straight to the back of his throat, his wild eyes drifting closed almost rapturously, the sensation of Rust's hot, wet mouth sealed tight around him forces the air out of Marty's chest in a weak wheeze of “ _Fuck_ ” cutting him off mid sentence and shriveling his lungs up like melted plastic bags left baking in the sun on the blacktop of the interstate.

Rust sucks hard, soft noises emerging from his throat while he does so and Marty feels like his dick might light on fire inside Rust's mouth and burn the both of them alive. He groans like a tranq darted bull, the pleasure so sharp it nearly gives him a stomach ache, and he cards his fingers through the loose hair on Rust's head, the urge to fuck into his perfect mouth so powerful he could feel the trembling in his muscles rolling from his ankles up to his thighs.

Weak afternoon sunlight threads in through the blinds and Marty seems to come awake inside his own body, the reality of the moment crystallizing around him. His eyes linger on the black screened TV sitting on top of the bureau. The framed picture of Macie and Audrey as kids was hanging in a small frame on the East wall. A closet filled with work shirts and t-shirts, a few suits. No dresses, no blouses, no jewelry resting on polished wood and glinting in the sunlight. Loneliness living in every corner. His watch is on the bedside table, lying limp on its side with the wings of the straps spread out like a buckshot pheasant, the hands ticking inaudibly into a future that was streaming in by the second.

The sad remnants of what his life had become was strewn around them, and the only time Marty could remember being truly happy within the lost black hole of the past wasted decade was seeing Rust's eyes crack open again through plum colored bruises as he stirred back to life upon the stark angelic white of a hospital bed.

Fuck it. Just fuck it all. He needs this. Needs _him._

Rust is sliding off his cock with a wet popping sound that almost makes him come apart right then and there. “How do you want this?” Rust asks, propping his hands on Marty's knees and looking up at him with eyes that have gone wet, wide, and glassy like he'd been blowing coke lines instead of Marty.

He had a flashfire vision of _needing_ Rust spread out on his back, no rhyme or reason for it, he just knew he fucking needed it like he needed air and water and food and all that other shit that was key to continued survival.

“Rust, ugh- oh fuck- _Rust_. Lie down baby. Get on the bed.” Marty wheezes, and their lips come together again messy, teeth clicking against each other and he can taste traces of himself in Rust's mouth. The thought makes his limbs weak, and when they both start peeling clothes off he struggles to remember to remove his slippers before he can slide his sweatpants down over his feet.

Soon enough Rust is naked in the yellowing sunlight, clothes flung into the far corners of the room, and is sprawling out upon the bedsheets like he'd been shot and left there to die, breathing hard with his erection jutting skyward. Marty processes this, and is almost startled, like he'd forgotten it would be there and that smooth shaved pussy wouldn't be. Marty knew that he could do things with his tongue that kept girls coming back. Actively _enjoyed_ it, and he still wasn't quite sure if he'd enjoy having another man's fucking dick in his mouth, had barely had even a second to start entertaining the idea, even if it was Rust, _just Rust_ , but it loomed there in his line of vision, rock hard and going damp at the tip. So like his own, and yet different in every way, shape, and form.

Rust stares, eyes lust fogged with Marty locked firmly in his cross-hairs, gazing up at him like some ancient entity, an anthropomorphic personification of judgment or dreams or scented meat or any of that other weird shit Rust always talked about, and Marty's technically the one on top now but he's always felt slightly smaller beneath Rust's half-lidded scrutiny.

“What do you want?” Rust asks, and his voice is surprisingly steady for how hard he is panting, his fingers winding into the sheets while he lies there unselfconsciously. Marty feels stupid for a moment, standing over him, naked, gut pushed out, and balding, while he floundered in existential crisis over the sight of another man's dick. “It's your rodeo cowboy.” Rust says, permission lacing every word. _Whatever you want Marty, anything at all._

Marty's always been good at rodeo, even has the trophies and the belt buckles to prove it. He decided then that it would be best for him to start with familiar territory.

He sinks down to the floor as Rust had earlier, knees popping and groaning the whole way, and he gets his hands up under Rust and drags him down to the edge of the bed by the meat of his ass. Marty takes a single spare moment to remind himself that Rust had showered that very morning and takes relief in that knowledge before he is spreading him open and just diving right in. The first lazy swipe of his tongue over delicate musky skin has Rust dragging a sharp breath into his mouth like he was just then breaking above the surface of whatever it was they were doing here, breathing his name out like a curse or a prayer. “ _Marty_.” And Marty knows he's real good at this, or at least that he used to be. Hasn't had much cause to demonstrate for some time, but something about Rust. Just... _something about Rust_.

Rust's lean, coltish legs are dragged out to drape over his shoulders, the heel of one bare foot sliding down the line of his spine to grind hard into his lower back, and Marty eats him out like he's trying to dismantle a bomb. Thighs squeeze in a desperate rhythm around his head, and Rust claws his long fingered grip to reach for the headboard but can't quite make it, fisting his hands into the sheets instead, his dick twitching and bouncing off his thigh like a car struck catbird. Marty's dick aches like a chunk of burning iron hanging heavy between his legs, and every cord in Rust's neck and arms stands out like a wood carving in relief, sun-warmed skin flushed pink down to his navel. The pale puckered scar was starkly visible above his bellybutton like the second piece of a runic compass to match the first. He arches back in one long sinuous movement, rolling his hips forward and back in a slow grind on Marty's questing tongue. “F-fuck-” and “God, _God_ , Marty-” slipping out in soft mewls. His eyes flutter in his head and he stops saying coherent words and starts to moan, long and tortured like he was dying slow, Marty's tongue and spit gone corrosive and burning him from the outside in.

“Jesus, Jesus. Sit up, sit up.” Rust breathes, voice gone rough and weak.

Marty drags his head back, licking his lips unconsciously. “Uh?” He wonders how long they're going to play switcheroo before they finally buckle down and stick to something. “Why?” He asks, sucking at the skin of Rust's thigh, pulling up a mottled red spot under his lips. “Having a grand ol' time down here.”

“Gonna ride you.” Rust says simply, as though he was telling him he was gonna do something mundane like go down to the store, or step outside to grab the mail. Marty's mouth opens in a small 'o' of want, the moisture there drying up and blowing away in a tumbleweed of exhaled breath.

“Okay.” He breathes out unsteady, feeling the world tilting off its axis just a little bit. He crawls up onto the bed, wading through the mess of sheets and flops down, back up against the headboard. Rust slides into his lap quick and precise like a greased up lizard, straddling his thighs. Their eyes meet and Marty thinks again of air current shifts and oiled machines running smooth. Rust just looks at him, eyes open a little wide and pupils filling up the blue in his eyes like a solar eclipse. He blinks, but his eyes don't quite close, and he brushes light fingers up over the planes of Marty's chest, keeps on looking at him like he's trying to decide if he's real or not.

“You alright?” Marty asks eventually, squirming to adjust his burning erection, when Rust doesn't say or do anything for long seconds.

Rust blinks fully and makes eye contact again. “Yeah. You got something?”

_Lube. He means lube._

“Drawer.”

“Been doing things when I ain't around?” Rust drawls steady, leaning over and fishing one paw through the contents of Marty's bedside table drawer.

“You've been around for a while now.” Marty says and wraps his hands firmly around the bone of Rust's hips because fuck it, he wants to. He doesn't miss the slight upward quirk of Rust's lips.

He palms the strawberry flavored lube and shoots Marty a look, eyes darting from it to him and back.

“Fuck off I like it.” Marty huffs

“I didn't say nothin'.” Rust says, but Marty doesn't get much chance to say much else because Rust is popping open the cap, slicking his fingers up with the faintly pink liquid and reaching behind himself as easy as anything. “Jesus, slobbered all over me.” He says quiet, breath slipping out in puffs and Marty doesn't have a comeback for that either because Rust is easing two fingers inside himself, sitting back on them with a groan, working himself open.

Marty's wondering if he's done this before, how _many_ times he might've done this before, if he'd been fucking men on the side all along since they'd known each other, but he cuts that theory down when it rises. Sounded too much like Rummy grunting insults in his head. Maybe in those four no man's land years when he was in narco. Maybe before that. Marty might never know, but he has a sudden fervent hope that he's the first one in a long time. The only one maybe.

He also hopes Rust gets a move on before his dick explodes and kills the both of them, but Rust is holding him in firm, slick fingers, stroking him once, twice, then rises up above him like a bird leaping for flight. He bites Marty's ear and sinks back down taking Marty in all the way to the hilt, mouth dropped open and eyes slipping closed to let doll-like lashes fan down against his cheeks.

Then Rust starts to move, and things kind go away from Marty a little bit after that. They rock together, cursing and gasping and Rust eventually stops moving all together and just holds on to Marty's shoulders tight, head thrown back, eyes and mouth open wide as Marty fucks up into him with everything he has, pulling sound after choked sound from somewhere deep in his throat.

“ _Fuck, Marty-_ ” Rust says, eyes squeezed back shut and he gasps, the lines of his neck going taut as he sucks in lungfuls of air. Marty feels like he's dying, thinks he might pop a lung if they keep this pace up- the way Rust says his name like that does something to him that he can't quite describe. He finally gets the balls to wrap one fist tight around Rust's dick and strokes quick, thinking it ain't all that different from himself and it's just _Rust_ anyways- and Rust is keening, fingernails pulling pink lines up Marty's back as he curls over him like a grasping spider- just moaning “ _MartyMartyMarty-_ ” like a monk's mantra, starts shuddering hard, going silent as white heat spills over Marty's fingers.

Marty rolls up into him maybe half a dozen more times before he's coming like a freight train, like a plane crash, like two stars colliding and rocketing sparks and flames out into space like the Deathstar blowing up in _Star Wars_ and he holds Rust close after, the both of them breathing in sweat-moist air, with the dust motes of seventeen years gone kicking up and catching the light to float lazy in the air between them.

 

=+=+=+=

 

Time finds them again in the first cast shadows of chilly evening, still sprawled out in bed, some werewolf flick playing on the TV on the bureau, and neither of them think too hard about moving much. Rust shifts just enough to get his head up near Marty's from where he'd been laying like a downed deer, and Marty curls his arm up just enough to pet gentle between his shoulder blades, feeling the warmth under his fingertips like an answer that had been waiting in the hollow space of his heart.

They fall sleep there later, TV flickering soothing light, the volume cast down low. The both of them quiet, calm and warm, having finally thawed out from winter, now gently passing into spring.

 


End file.
